


A Road That Runs Both Ways

by nwhepcat



Category: Supernatural, pre-S6
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-03
Updated: 2011-05-06
Packaged: 2017-12-14 15:02:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 17,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/838227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nwhepcat/pseuds/nwhepcat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A snake-handling physicist and an angel find themselves in a bar....</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Castiel stands in the doorway of the hospital room, eyes on Jimmy Novak. He holds a bundle in his arms, a blanket-swaddled baby, as his wife sleeps. Castiel finds he cannot look away from Jimmy's face. In all his thousands of years, his handful of months walking among humankind, he has not seen anything like the joy in this man's expression. It casts a light so bright that Castiel has to turn his face away.

Without warning, the light extinguishes, leaving only the harsh illumination of the fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling.

"You're not welcome here." Jimmy's voice is harsh, implacable.

Hesitantly, Castel takes a step forward, halting as Jimmy gets to his feet. "I require --" He stops, drawing in a breath before trying again. "I've come to ask your help."

A harsh laugh bursts out of Jimmy, but there's no humor in it. "You want something from me? Fuck off, Castiel." Suddenly the child is no longer in Jimmy's arms, there's no bed with a napping young woman. The room itself has vanished, leaving only the unforgiving glare of the fluorescent lights in a sterile white space.

In the blink of an eye, Jimmy is upon him, fists lashing out, catching Castiel on his cheek and temple. Staggering back, Castiel realizes his mistake: He has come to this corner of Heaven thoughtlessly wearing the likeness of his earthly vessel.

He should have known better.

One final blow causes him to stumble back, tripping over his own feet. When he falls, it's not on the hard tile floor of the sterile emptiness he'd just occupied, but on rough black asphalt. It is a moonless night, yet the stars are cloaked by clouds or something else. As Castiel's eyes adapt to the darkness to some degree, he makes out hulking black shapes of trees. Pacing the asphalt surface to determine its boundaries, he quickly discovers his first impression was true -- he is on a road, what Dean calls two-lane blacktop.

If he's not mistaken, Castiel has discovered the Axis Mundi, but not his own manifestation. It is the Winchesters' version. How is he to find his way if he has no reference points? (And why is he here? He had no conscious desire to seek the Garden.)

He stops his restless movements, stilling himself to take in any details in the dark that might offer him a hint which direction he should take.

It's difficult to compose himself, to clear the agitated thoughts spilling over into a confused tangle. Echoes of screams, afterimages of light pouring forth from his dying brothers. Blood on his hands, Dean Winchester would call it, but of course there is no literal blood.

This time the thought of Dean triggers a memory that does provide a connection to this blustery roadside. _I'll just wait here_ , he'd told Dean the night Zachariah had shoved Dean into a vision of the future.

Remembering Dean's warm hand on his shoulder, his fervent _Don't ever change_ , Castiel is buffeted by a wave of shame and despair. He has changed, and not for the better.

He slips his hand into the pocket of his trenchcoat, hoping the cellphone is still there. The instant his fingers touch it, it erupts in the ringtone Dean had set up to replace the factory setting: _Angel Is a Centerfold_.

"Dean?"

"Waiting is thirsty work, my man." The voice is unfamiliar, higher in pitch, with a drawl unlike Dean's speech. "Well, not technically, but 'my angel' sounds pretty gay. Not that I mean that as any kind of slur, just ... that's not me."

"Who are you?" Castiel demands, using the human equivalent of the voice that has made him feared in some quarters of Heaven.

The voice at the end of the line betrays no apprehension. "Why don't you come out my way and we can have a little powwow."

Castiel sees nothing but the black ribbon of road stretching before him and the looming figures of the trees. "How do--"

"Energize."

An unpleasant tingling spreads from the hand that holds the phone, up through his arm and to the rest of his limbs. With no further warning, Castiel finds himself in a shabby building, blinking in the sudden light, even though it's fairly dim.

When his eyes adjust, Castiel sees that he's in a tavern, perhaps a step lower than the sort Dean usually frequents. On the bar is a machine bristling with wires and clamps and blinking lights, and behind this strange console stands a man in a shirt whose sleeves have been shorn off -- unlike his hair, which hangs past his shoulders.

"Always knew I could do that, if I had me some copper, alligator clips and a wad of chewing gum," says the man, whose features bear a passing resemblance to a rodent.

"Your ideal Heaven is hardware and chewing gum?" Castiel asks, incredulous.

"That and some pretty girls, a good jukebox and plenty of PBR." The rat-faced man thrusts out a hand whose nails seem surprisingly well manicured. "Name's Ash."


	2. A Road That Runs Both Ways

"Castiel."

"Yeah, I know. I've been hearing about you. Like a brewski?"

"No. How do you know of me?"

Ash gestures to another dubious looking piece of machinery. "Angel radio. It's a little like a police scanner, but the problems are on a much higher plane."

"You have been listening to the communications of my brothers?"

Raising an eyebrow, Ash says, "Your brothers, your sisters. You." He retrieves a can of beer from a glass-fronted case behind the bar. "If you don't mind."

It's not the liberty regarding the beer that sends righteous rage spilling over, sending physical reactions throughout this body that, here, is nothing more than an illusion. "How dare you spy on the communications of God's messengers?" If this were the earth, Castiel would flick a finger, and Ash would in an instant (an eternity of blinding pain) be nothing more than a literal representation of his name.

Ash returns his gaze, completely unconcerned. Not even Dean could attain this level of unflappability, not even as a pretence.

"Y'all have a lot to say for messengers of a god who's gafiated." At Castiel's piercing look of angry incomprehension, Ash sighs, adding, "Gafiate. Getting Away From It All. So what brings you to my neck of the woods?"

"You did."

"You were hanging around already. Maybe I'm too curious for my own good, but I've gotta wonder."

Seized by an impulse, Castiel asks, "Do you have anything stronger than beer?"

"That I do, my man." Ash turns to the back bar and retrieves a bottle of Jack Daniel's. He pours two fingers into a squat glass shaped vaguely like a barrel.

"Leave the bottle." When Ash sets the square bottle beside the glass, Castiel picks it up and pours until the glass is nearly full. "What do they say about me?"

"Depends who's talking. Some say you're an even bigger prick than Zachariah. And that's the ones who _like_ you." Ash sets another glass down with a solid thump and fills it. By the time that's accomplished, Castiel slams his now-empty glass down and Ash refills it without remark. Again, Castiel tosses back the contents of the glass, then snatches up the bottle, carrying it and the glass to a corner of the barroom. Above the table a fierce-faced young man extends a blunt middle finger into the air in a black and white poster. Castiel pulls his chair out with a vicious screech on the scarred wood floor and sits himself down.

"Nice taste," Ash says from the bar. "The man in black."

Glancing up at the poster, Castiel notes, "He's not wearing black."

Ash smirks and retrieves another bottle of Jack Daniel's from the back bar. "He will, Oscar, he will. I been to his corner of heaven. Hell, brought some of his friends around for a jam session. We passed around guitars and jars of 'shine for damn, must have been a week. That's subjective, of course. Time doesn't mean much around here, but you know that." He reaches beneath the bar and sets a clear jar onto the dark wood, then walks over to the jukebox and bangs his knee against it.

"This is impossible," Castiel says. "Humans cannot pass from their own heaven into another's."

A rough voice emerges from the machine, and Ash retrieves the jar and ambles to Castiel's table. "Impossible for most. Most people are too distracted by their own personal heaven to tinker with how shit works. Tinkering with how shit works _is_ my heaven."

"How is it that the angels don't know that you eavesdrop on us, that you move where there is no path?"

Ash shrugs. "I've learned me some Enochian. Comes in handy. This place is covered in wards." Twisting the lid off the jar, he tips the wide rim of the jar to his lips, his Adam's apple bobbing as he takes three hearty swallows. "Damn," he says, eyes glittering, as he sets down the jar. Ash pushes the jar across the table. "Try a sip."

Castiel follows Ash's lead, but when he swallows the first mouthful, he sprays the second before him in a spluttering coughing fit. Ash relieves him of the jar before it can slip from his fingers. When he can breathe again, Castiel wheezes, "What is that?"

"Moonshine, man. Sorry, but I did say take a _sip_."

When the coughing subsides, Castiel wipes at the tears that have streamed from his eyes. "I like it."


	3. A Road That Runs Both Ways

"I like it." Castiel reaches across the table for the jar and drains half its contents. Heat buzzing through his limbs, he reluctantly passes the moonshine back to Ash. "It's much faster than what they have at the liquor store. Why don't they sell this there?"

Ash laughs. "This stuff is home-distilled. And illegal, at least in the states."

"Why are all the best intoxicants illegal?"

"Dunno, Castiel. Maybe because the original colonies were founded by religious nuts who couldn't get along with anyone else, and they inbred once they got there. That's one of my theories. The short version." He passes the jar back to Castiel.

"Perhaps their intentions were good, but they found themselves beset on every side by those who would thwart them."

"You know what they say about good intentions."

Scowling into the liquid still remaining in the jar, Castiel says, "All was chaos among my brothers. They had prepared for war when Lucifer rose, and once he was caged once more, their bloodlust went unsatisfied. They knew our father had ... gafiated ... and each faction tried to rise to power. When I was brought back to life and my powers more than restored, I thought it was a mandate from God, that I was meant to reestablish order." He downs another two swallows of moonshine, passing over the last ounce back to Ash. "I was as arrogant in this as Zachariah. To put it in human terms, I have blood on my hands, the blood of my brothers."

"So what now?"

"I don't know," Castiel says morosely. "The only allies I still have are those whose actions are abhorrent to me. If I choose to act without their support, I would be a target for every faction -- including that one."

Ash takes a meditative sip, then asks, "They'd be gunning for you?"

"They would. And I don't believe this time I'd merit any divine intervention. The only true ally I have is Dean Winchester, and I have neglected him even as he suffers from the loss of his brother."

Draining the last of the moonshine, Ash thumps the jar onto the table top. "Sucks to be you. More moonshine?"

"I would appreciate it."

Rising, Ash heads for the bar by way of the jukebox, striking the top with his fist and continuing on his way. The song that had been playing ceased abruptly, to be replaced with a voice growling from the garish machine without musical introduction: _Take this job and shove it. I ain't workin' here no more..._

Something strong gusts through him at the sound of these words. Not a sensation, exactly. He'd call it an emotion, except that's impossible. A memory. Anael's terrible scream, as if she had fallen in battle. Then, utter silence where her voice had been. A while later, a growing sense of betrayal within the garrison as those closest to her remembered bits of private conversations, revealed her undue fascination with humanity. Castiel felt that betrayal keenly, even though he had not shared the others' view that humans are hardly above the animals.

It is doubtful, he thinks sourly, that anyone would feel Castiel's loss were he to vanish from the ranks. Most were done with him long before Lucifer was stuffed back in his cage. Those who stand by his side now do so because he holds power, and the moment they see an opportunity to wrest it from him, Castiel will mean less than nothing to them. He will be stalked and felled by the sword of a brother, the blackened imprint of his wings scarring some piece of earth where he falls.

Setting the second jar before Castiel, Ash says, "It might not cure your problems, but it will render you unable to think about 'em for a while. Sometimes that's as good."

"You don't have enough."

"This is Heaven, dude. I have as much as I need."


	4. A Road That Runs Both Ways

Castiel sets about testing this assertion, impressing Ash with his monumental consumption. As Castiel waits to become sufficiently intoxicated, Ash explains the dual role of bartenders and finds himself rewarded with a litany of Castiel's failures, betrayals, manipulations. "I was arrogant enough to believe that I could not become like Zachariah, because I felt I had Heaven's best interests at heart. I believed I was the only one who did."

"That's not exactly an original sin. I had that figured out about the Baptist church I went to when I was five."

Castiel shakes his head. "I am an angel. I am not at liberty to sin."

"You think you're the only one?"

Slamming his empty jar onto the table, Castiel rises to his feet. "It does not matter what the others do. I am accountable for myself."

Slouched in his wooden chair, Ash gazes up at him, raising an eyebrow. Castiel suddenly feels foolish to be looming and shouting over a human who is so unconcerned. He stalks to the jukebox, slapping its top with an open palm, then continues on to the bar to duck behind it to rummage for the moonshine jars as Ash had.

A third voice emerges from the jukebox:

_I'm going off of the deep end_  
And I'm slowly losing my mind  
I disagree with the way I've been livin'  
But I can't hold myself in line. 

There is one jar, not the dozens he expects, below the bar. As Castiel thumps it on the table before Ash, he says, "The songs on that machine are annoyingly apt."

"Some days what you need is the swaggering cock-rock," Ash says, unscrewing the jar. "Others it's the misery and gin songs."

"I think I prefer nothing at all."

Ash gulps half the contents, then makes a prolongued exhalation of satisfaction. "Afraid you're in the wrong tavern for that," he says cheerfully. He sends the jar sliding across the table with a flick of his wrist. "In this joint it's 'bartender picks the music, patron shuts his cakehole.' Unless you happen to be a pretty lady, then everything's negotiable."

Scowling, Castiel regards the small amount of liquid he's left in the jar to pass back to Ash, but as the next song begins -- same voice, same sentiment -- _I could quit doing wrong, start doing right. You don't care about what I think -- think I'll just stay here and drink_ \-- he downs the last two swallows.

The jar sounds like a gunshot when Castiel slams it onto the table.

Ash only smirks. "More?"

"That's the last of it," Castiel says with satisfaction.

"There's always more." Rising, Ash traces the same path, though this time he leaves the jukebox unmolested. He disappears briefly behind the bar at the same place Castiel had been looking, yet when he emerges there's a full jar in his oddly feminine hand. "I tell you what, you've got a pretty fierce capacity for liquor there. You got a hollow wing?"

"I once drank a liquor store," Castiel says, and the pride in his voice shocks him on some level.

"No shit." He passes Castiel the jar. "Go to town." Pulling his chair around to face the opposite direction, he straddles it, folding his arms on the wooden curve of its back. "Bartenders supposed to just listen, make a few sympathetic noises. So that's another rule I like to grind under my heel. Sounds like you have a pretty good grip on what's wrong. So what do you want to do now?"

In his thousands of years, in heaven or on earth, he cannot remember being asked this question. _What are you going to do?_, certainly. And _What next?_ But never has he been asked what he wants.

Castiel closes his eyes, and for the first time he can feel the effects of the moonshine. The sensation is much like the shift of seemingly solid ground that accompanies a distant earthquake, or a minor one. He resists the impulse to open his eyes and surrenders to the strangeness instead. After a long moment, he says, "I wish to gafiate."

Rubbing his hand across the lower part of his face, Ash regards Castiel. "As in drop off the radar?"

"Yes."

"Well, it's doable, because it's been done. The question is, how? I heard all the buzz about Anna when that went down."

"No," Castiel says flatly, without waiting for the question Ash was about to pose. "I have no wish to have my memories erased, and falter my way through a human childhood. I can't address my failures if I wipe the slate clean. It's cowardice."

Ash purses his lips. "So Gabriel's witness protection program trick --"

"No," Castiel repeats. He hid from responsibility and caused untold suffering. "Even if it were possible for an angel of my rank, I would not go that way."

"All right, we're running low on options we know have worked, but there's other avenues to explore," Ash says. His fingers tap rapidly on the scarred tabletop, as if he's making lightning-fast calculations on some unseen machine. "Well, the first thing I should ask, human or angel? Or hell, I dunno, lichen? You're not all that different from lichen yourself, a bit of this mixed with a bit of that, and you do kinda like to eat rocks, don't you?"

"I have no idea what you're going on about."

Ash shrugs, his skinny shoulders bobbing under the frayed edges of his sleeveless shirt. "Most people don't. It's easy. Who do you want to be? How do you want to live? How _long_ do you want to live?"

 _Human or angel?_ He recalls the last time he'd been -- well, not quite human but more so than angel. Landing with a bone jarring body slam on the deck of the shrimp boat, battered, bloody, deep cuts carved by his own hand. Getting his first real taste of pain and sorrow and regret and the certainty of death. Complete separation from his family, who had previously been present in his consciousness at all times.

"Human," he says, the word tumbling out of him quickly. He blinks in surprise at the certainty in his voice.

Ash merely smiles, as if the answer to his question was never in doubt. "All right. Give me ... ninety four hours." He pushes back his chair with a shriek of wood against wood and strides to the ungainly machine hulking on the corner of the bar.

"You know time is meaningless here. Why do you speak of hours? In this place there is nothing but now."

Reaching for a notepad and pencil, Ash scrawls a quick sketch and mathematical notation. "It's human shorthand for 'Give me a shitload of now if you want me to do this shit for you.'" He raises the lid on the machine and begins typing with his left hand as his pencil continues dancing over the paper.

Fascinated, Castiel watches for a moment. "Where do you find spare parts to build these machines?"

Without turning away from the screen or slowing his scrawling, Ash responds, "I been known to sneak into the Collyer Brothers' heaven. Now git."

"But I --"

" _Ninety-four hours._ "

The cellphone in Castiel coat pocket chirps. Startled, he opens it and puts it to his ear. "Yes?" There is no voice, only a vaguely unpleasant tingling over his whole body before he finds himself standing in a clearing by a pond. Some yards away he sees a dock and realizes he has been in this place before, in Dean's dreams. But this time he is alone.

There is no sound but birdsong, the peeps and low groans of frogs, punctuated randomly by small splashes made by fish.

"I'll just wait here, then."


	5. A Road That Runs Both Ways

Despite his avowal that time has no meaning in Heaven, it does indeed seem like a shitload of now that passes before Ash retrieves him via the accursed cellphone.

Before Castiel can even adjust to the sudden change in venue -- which is a surprise, as he does it all the time -- Ash is speaking, his dainty hands gesticulating. His silver skull ring appears to wink as it catches the light.

"The problem is getting you from this realm to meatspace without losing anything in the process -- except your grace. I've done plenty of screwing around moving ones and zeros from there to here -- downloaded movies and tunes and whatnot. Shoulda let you chill in my media room now that I think of it, but I was distracted from the niceties. Anyway, I've never moved any data from here to there. And shit with mass, it's pretty radical. But I had somewhere to start. I took a little hootch over to Albert's place to talk about all this, and we kinda knocked together an idea."

With that, Ash seizes Castiel by the sleeve and pulls him toward his computer, one keystroke making an image resolve from the blackened screen. "This is the model we came up with. If E equals --"

"I have no wish to spend another shitload of now on the mathematics," Castiel growls. "Can you do it?"

Affronted, Ash pauses with a hand in midair. "I'm pretty sure."

"Is that the best you can offer?"

"Considering that it should be impossible, yeah. At the risk of being too technical for your big-ass hurry, what we'll do is translate your grace to data, then your memories and personality. We send your vessel to earth, then beam the data package you want. I can keep your grace here with heavy duty encryption and an assload of wards and sigils. I'm totally off the radar, so it should be safe from your enemies."

The thought of his grace being under attack, even as Ash dismisses it, gives Castiel a pang. It is not valueless, despite his eagerness to cast it off. But the things he has done to maintain his office, to establish control and keep it, have tarnished his grace. Castiel is by no means alone in this, but he is the only one who seems to care. Perhaps it is better in Ash's safekeeping than in his own.

"Havin' second thoughts?" Ash inquires.

"No."

"You might want to. I can't exactly test this out. There's no way to be certain you'll get exactly where I mean for you to go, or that the data package winds up where I aim it. Something could always go wrong, and the data could be corrupted."

This prompts a bitter laugh from Castiel.

"It's a little less hilarious than it sounds. I'll keep a couple of backup copies here and I'll try to monitor you, but as long as we're dealing with the spirit world to meatspace interface, it's tricky."

It's curious, Castiel thinks, that Ash and the Winchesters alike refer to human beings as meat. It seems little better than Uriel's dismissal of their worth. Castiel himself has been less appreciative of Jimmy Novak's sacrifice of his earthly form as he should be.

"My vessel," he says. "Could this procedure damage it?"

The corner of Ash's mouth quirks downward. "That's another clause in the 'Shit can always go wrong' informed consent document."

What are his choices? To stay here and continue to corrupt himself in the service of a Father who doesn't care, or take such risks that even a man as brilliant and cocksure as Ash feels he must enumerate them. There's only one choice, uncertain as it is. "When can we do this?"

"Any time you're ready." Ash looks almost psychotically happy to be conducting an experiment of which he _doesn't_ already know the outcome.

Castiel nods gravely. "Now."

***

If he were to tear away his grace on his own, as Anael had, he would have to be in his true form. But the translation of his grace into zeros and ones requires it to be extracted from his vessel by machine, hulking and ungainly, of Ash's recent invention.

At Castiel's request the jukebox is silent. He can't imagine what song could perfectly sum up getting his grace ripped away and then being blown to the winds like dandelion fluff, but he's certain Ash owns at least one.

"What we're doin' is 112 kinds of impossible," Ash says, "but I'm as certain as I have any right to be that this is gonna work. Hell, gettin' bit eighteen times handlin' rattlesnakes without dying should be impossible too, but all things are possible to him that believeth, am I right?"

Ash does not seem to require an answer, so Castiel watches his fingers dance over the keyboard of his computer. There's a large hypodermic needle on the bar next to a bottle of beer; in it resides a microchip no bigger than a grain of rice, engraved with Enochian wards to keep Castiel flying under the radar, as Ash puts it. This is also the destination for the data packet Ash will transmit once Castiel has fallen to earth.

"Try and relax," Ash tells him, jabbing him at the base of his skull with the needle. "Here goes."

Then everything is blinding light and searing pain, then utter dark and stifling nothingness.


	6. A Road That Runs Both Ways

It's been a pretty good day, Dean figures. Make that a damn good day, but he's right now on the ragged edge of it. That would have something to do with Ben in the back seat of Lisa's car, chanting tunelessly into the dark, "I whip my hair back and forth, I whip my hair back and forth, I whip my hair back and forth, I whip my hair back and forth," which has been drilling into Dean's brain since they left the ballpark.

Dean shoots Lisa a sideways glance. "Lees, would you mind a lot if I throttled your child?"

"Not a _lot_." She offers him a weary grin. "Welcome to the more fun moments of parenting."

"Don't let them haters keep me off my grind," Ben counters.

"I think he's officially hit the obnoxious teen phase, a couple of years ahead of time."

"Shake 'em off, shake 'em off, shake 'em-- holy _crap!_ " Ben yelps.

Before Dean can ask Ben what's wrong or Lisa can chide him for saying crap, they see the ball of light streak across the night sky. When it disappears behind a screen of trees, Dean half expects the ground to shake and a blast to split the air, but there's no sound.

"What the hell was _that?_ " Lisa blurts.

"Dunno," Dean says. All the relaxation of the day -- and even his weary irritation with Ben's form of self-entertainment -- drains away in an instant, leaving him on high alert. Both Ben and Lisa pick up on it, mirroring it back to him. "Maybe I should check it out. I'll drop you two back at the house and come back around."

"Dean, I thought you were done with all that," she says.

"This is different, Lees. This is two miles from your house. It might be nothing to worry about. If so, we know, and we can stop worrying."

It's Ben who asks, "What if it's something bad?"

"I'll whip my hair back and forth. If that doesn't work, I'll sing that song till its brain explodes."

That's not good enough for Ben. "Are you gonna torch it like you did that thing that snatched all those kids?"

"Depends what it is, kiddo. I'll go prepared."

A tense quiet falls over them as Dean gooses the accelerator a little, keeping to their homeward course. Just as they round a bend, a pale figure staggers onto the two-lane.

"Dean!"

He's already jamming on the brakes as the name is wrenched from her. The man in the road stumbles backward, windmilling his arms just before he falls into the ditch.

"Whoa, that dude is naked!" Ben says unnecessarily.

Dean pops the trunk, then shoulders open his door. "Stay in the car." Though his intent is to grab a tire iron before approaching the naked guy, he changes course when he sees the man has fallen face-down into ditchwater.

"Sonofabitch," he mutters, crouching by the guy and grabbing him by the armpits. A tingle of warning lodges in his spine. Something's off. Something about the man is familiar, yet alien. Dean hoists him farther up the incline and turns him over. Mud obscures his face, but the warning ratchets up. Leaving him on the bank of the ditch, Dean goes to the trunk and grabs the iron and a ratty picnic blanket.

Dean wipes at the guy's face with a corner of the blanket and draws in a sharp breath. "Cas?"


	7. A Road That Runs Both Ways

Castiel opens his eyes, but there's no recognition in them.

"Cas, are you hurt?" There are bleeding scratches on his forearms and hands, many more on his legs and feet. A cut crosses his nose, with a cluster of small scratches nearby, where a branch must have whipped across his face. " _Cas._ "

He shows no response to the name, eying Dean with apprehension.

"Jimmy?" Dean had assumed he was gone -- blasted to bits by Lucifer or maybe cut loose by God when He put Cas back together with extra badass. He'd hoped so. The thought of the poor bastard enduring centuries more of being chained to Cas' comet is more than he wants to think about.

But there's no reaction to Jimmy Novak's name, either.

Who the fuck is in there? The warning tingle becomes a full-on red alert. " _Cristo._ "

Dean lets out a breath as that name produces no effect, either. He reaches toward Castiel, but Cas flinches back.

Showing his palms in the universal _I mean no harm_ , Dean croons, "Easy, it's okay. I just want to check to see if anything's broken, okay? You understand?"

No sign. Dean reaches toward his own head, running his fingers along his skull, as if checking for injury. Then he points between himself and Cas. Frowning, Cas reaches a tentative hand toward his own head.

"No, here, let me," Dean says. Gently he probes Cas's scalp for swelling or gashes, but he can feel nothing that accounts for Cas's disoriented state. Nothing that explains the sudden, wracking shivers that overtake Cas until, at last, he rolls to his side and vomits into the ditch water.

"Dean?"

Lisa's voice startles him; he'd forgotten her and Ben in his concern for Cas. He draws the blanket up around Cas. "It's okay, Lees."

"Should I call 911?"

"No." He's not sure what the EMTs would make of Cas. Dean's not altogether sure what _he_ makes of him. He's fucked up, that's for sure, but Dean isn't certain if he's human. "I know him."

"What does that-- Is he a hunter?"

"No, but -- I need to get him somewhere safe, so I can see what's wrong. Ben, buddy, I need you to ride up front with your mom."

Lisa gets her stern voice on, but it's not for Ben. "No way, Dean."

Snugging the blanket tighter around Cas, Dean says, "I can't leave him here. Cas, can you stand?" It's a pointless question, like asking a stump if it can wiggle its root.

"You are not putting this man in my car with my son."

"In the front, Ben," Dean orders. He scrabbles on the slope of the ditch to get a good angle to help Cas up.

Like a shot, Lisa's out of the car, and not to let Ben into the front seat. "I am not having you contradict --"

Before she can go any further, Dean slips his arm behind Cas's back and begins to hoist him to his feet, at which time all hell breaks loose. Cas arches away from the contact, a high-pitched wail torn from his throat. It's a fucking eerie sound, somewhere between a wounded animal and a dejected child. Twisting away from him, Cas falls onto his forearms and knees and pukes some more.

As the blanket slides away, Dean catches sight of Cas's back, scratched and filthy as it is, with two long, wide scars glinting almost silvery from his shoulders downward. "Jesus," he mutters. "What the hell happened to you, Cas?"

Lisa has backed against the side of her car. "I'll take Ben home. Then I'll drive you ... somewhere."

It's a better offer than he'd expected to get. "Yeah, sure, go."


	8. A Road That Runs Both Ways

Kneeling by Cas's side once more, Dean settles the blanket up around him again, careful not to let it drag across the skin of his back. Cas is shivering again, more violently than before, and Dean wonders....

"Don't even _think_ you're gonna die on me," he says. Tentatively he lays a hand on Cas's head, and when it doesn't make things worse, he strokes his hair. He remembers doing this only a time or two in his life, when Sammy was very sick and scared and Dad was off on some hunt. "We're gonna get you fixed up, Cas, you're gonna be all right." Too damn bad he can't promise Cas's dad will be on the scene soon to fix everything.

By the time Lisa gets back, the shivering has calmed to occasional shudders. Cas's eyes have closed, which is a little worrisome, but it freaks Dean out less than the terrified, vacant blue stare.

Lisa stands at the side of the road, a bundle of cloth in her arms. "Who is he?"

"His name is Castiel." He's not sure what to add to that. Dean hasn't told Lisa much about the epic battle of the last year, and _This is my buddy, angel of the Lord_ sounds nothing short of demented.

"He's important to you," she says.

His gaze flicks up to meet hers. "Yeah. He saved me, more than once."

She looks down at Castiel, probably wondering how someone so slight, so fragile looking, could save Dean's ass from anything. He's curled in on himself, his hair spiked up messily -- Dean realizes he's done that, wonders if he'd been prompted by some unconscious desire to make Cas more like what he once was.

"Well, then," Lisa says, "we'd better help him."

"We," Dean echoes stupidly.

Thrusting a couple of towels toward him, she says, "You'll want to get the blood and dirt off as much as you can." She leans into the back of the car, spreading a sheet out over the seat.

Dean does what he can, still reluctant to put any pressure on Cas's back. Lisa hands him a clean fleece throw to replace the dirty blanket.

"Cas? Hey, c'mon, Cas. We need to get you up for a minute so we can get you somewhere safe."

When Castiel opens his eyes the guarded weariness in them is like a fist squeezing Dean's heart.

"You're okay, you're safe with us," Dean says, taking Cas's right arm as gently as he can.

Without hesitation, Lisa's at Cas's other side, and the two of them get Cas on unsteady feet without any problems. Once they have him bundled in the back, with the grubby towels and blanket stuffed in a footwell, Dean settles into the passenger seat. Lisa stares at her hands resting on the steering wheel, 10 and 2.

Dean shifts in his seat, glancing back at Cas, who has let his eyes shut again. "I was thinking about that place on Norton Avenue. The house the builder defaulted on. It's no palace, but it's got walls and a roof and a door with locks--"

"No," Lisa says. "There's room at the house." As if speaking the words has helped her decide, she turns the key in the ignition.

"But -- Ben."

"Your friend can stay in the basement. There's that corner that isn't too grim. Ben will appreciate the break from laundry duty."

"Your meditation space? Lisa --"

She shoots him a sidelong look, a smile teasing at the corner of her mouth. "How about this one time you don't argue?"

A sigh gusts out of him. "Yes, ma'am."

Cas stays ... asleep? unconscious? switched off? for the transfer down to Lisa's basement, which makes the fireman's carry Dean uses less of a trauma for everyone concerned. With Lisa's help, Dean gets him settled on a soft mat, curled in on his side with the fleece wrapped around him.

"Can you tell what's happened to him?" she asks.

"No idea," Dean says. "It's almost like there's nobody in there."

"You're sure he shouldn't be in a hospital somewhere?"

"Hospitals ask questions." A glance up at Lisa tells him this statement has triggered a cascade of questions that she's _not_ asking. "Besides, this is nicer -- calmer," he adds, hoping it's a distraction from at least some of those. And it's true: Lisa's created a pleasant space down here, partitioned off by Japanese screens that hide the storage cubes and the washer and dryer, a carpet that softens the concrete floor, paint and pictures on the cinderblock walls.

"It still needs work," Lisa says. "He should be off the floor. Better for him and whoever's tending to him."

"Whoever's tending to him is going to be me," Dean says. It comes out more gruffly than he'd meant, and he makes an effort to soften his tone. "I wouldn't ask you to. He's my responsibility."

Lisa shakes her head. "Sometimes I think in your head, _everyone's_ your responsibility. For all we know, he dropped out of the sky. I get that you want to help him, but you're not _responsible._ "

She doesn't get it at all, but Dean doesn't have time to explain it. "Do me a favor, would you? There's a big medic's kit in the--" It occurs to him that maybe he's freaked her out enough for one night without having her dig through the arsenal in the Impala's trunk. "Forget it. It's faster to get it than tell you how to find it. Could you keep an eye on Cas for just a couple of minutes while I go after it?" _Sure, Dean, as if inflicting a naked wild man houseguest on her isn't bad enough, you should leave her alone with him too._

"Of course," she says. "Go. _Go._ "

He's halfway up the stairs when he turns toward her. "If a bright light comes out of nowhere -- or out of _him_ \-- hide your face, and don't open your eyes until it's gone. Got that?"

Lisa hesitates, puzzling over that one.

"Just humor me and promise."

"Okay."

Ben is waiting just beyond the basement door, trailing Dean through the kitchen and out into the garage, questions tumbling out of his mouth until Dean fervently wishes he'd go back to that goddamn hair song.

"Ben," he says, then forces himself to soften his voice and add, "buddy -- I need you to go back inside. Stay in the kitchen until I get back, in case your mom hollers upstairs that she needs something. Come and get me if she does, okay?"

Nodding, Ben says, "Okay, sure," and turns to go.

 _Huh. I'll have to remember that technique. Don't shut him out; divert him if you have to, but include him._ It's the first glimpse Dean's had in a while of the kid he'd first met, the one who was so like him it was eerie. _He's a protector too._

Pushing the tarp from the back end of the car, Dean rummages in the trunk for the med kit, then buttons everything back up the way it was. On his way back through the kitchen, he says, "There's something else you can do for me."

"Sure. What?"

"Grab some towels and washcloths, some soap and a big pan of pretty hot water. Your mom'll be up for all that in a couple of minutes."

Downstairs Cas is still curled on his side and Lisa's sitting on the mat in that yoga pose she does so effortlessly, watching him. No, studying him.

"Ben's getting some things together. Some hot water and soap and towels. I guess I'll need a pair of my sweats and a tee once I've got Cas cleaned up." Dean kneels beside him, lifting a corner of the fleece.

"So this is Cas," Lisa says softly, as if he's some relative or old friend she's heard about.

The fleece slips from Dean's fingers as he looks up sharply.

"You say his name a lot in your sleep," she explains. "I guess you didn't realize because those aren't the dreams that wake you up."

No, he hadn't realized. The ones that wake him up are about Sam or Hell. Or Sam in Hell. "Yeah," he says stupidly. "This is Cas." Lifting the blanket again, he angles himself for a better view of Cas's back.

"Who is he?" Lisa asks. "And how did he get here?"

He thinks of that blaze across the sky. _Sheriff Castiel lost his reelection bid, maybe?_ "I don't know how he got here. And I'm not sure how to answer who he is. Maybe not who he was." He flicks a glance toward her. "That complicated enough for you?"

"Complicated answers come with a complicated guy." Her tone is matter-of-fact, non-accusing, but he can't help reading _complicated_ as _fucked-up_.

"How's _angel of the Lord_ sound to you?" _Crazy, that's how it sounds._ He avoids Lisa's gaze, turning his attention to Castiel's back. "Sonofabitch."

"What?"

"I could've sworn there were scars on his back. Big ones." Gingerly Dean touches the smooth skin at Cas's shoulder blade. This time there's no violent reaction, no response at all.

Lisa rises to her feet with the yoga-teacher fluidity that Dean normally loves to watch, but all he can see right now is Cas. Or this shell that used to contain Cas.

"I'll get the water and towels," Lisa says. She's back in a short time with the things Ben's prepared, then makes another trip down with clothes for Cas and Dean both. "Ben and I are going to make a run to the store, pick up some foods Cas might be able to handle, some supplies and stuff."

Dean stops himself from telling her to wait until they know whether Cas will be waking up at all. "Shouldn't he be getting to bed?"

Lisa shrugs. "He's wired. First the ballgame, then all this. It's summer; he doesn't have to be alert in the morning, or even awake."

"Sure, then. Good thinking. Tell Ben he's been a huge help."

"That'll make him happy."

Looking up at Lisa, Dean reaches for her hand. "You have too. Thanks for this."

She regards Cas's too-still form. "An angel, huh?"

"Yeah. Believe it or not."

Squeezing Dean's hand, she says, "It's no freakier than changelings, I guess."


	9. A Road That Runs Both Ways

The pale scars at his back might have vanished, but the scratches and cuts from running through the trees are as red as when Dean first checked him over. Grimacing, he picks up the soap and a washcloth. "Here's one you never see in one of those Precious Moments figurines: giving an angel a sponge bath."

It's not like he's never done this before, though it's been years. And it was Sammy, so it's not like there were any real boundaries after a lifetime of sharing motel rooms. Dean tries to pretend it's Sam, but the complete absence of scars and half a foot of missing height strains Dean's suspension of disbelief beyond the snapping point. Without Cas in his vessel, it's amazing how fragile this slight body seems. And how pale -- he wonders if Jimmy was that fair, or if Castiel erased any tan he'd had along with other scars and signs of damage. (He'd never thought of a tan as evidence of damage until that dermatology nurse he picked up in Abilene, but she'd made a hell of an impression with the pre-sex mole check.)

Once the sponge bath's done, he tends to Cas's cuts and abrasions from thrashing through the woods. Still no reaction from Cas, not even a muted squawk of protest. After Dean manages to wrestle Cas's unwieldy, floppy limbs into the sweatpants and tee, he pours the pan of water down the utility sink and gathers up the towels and washcloths to throw into the wash machine. As a sudden choking sound pulls his attention back to the mat where Cas is stretched out, Dean drops the linens and races back toward him.

Back arched, Cas digs his heels into the mat, but by the time Dean reaches him, the spastic tension is subsiding from his muscles. His eyes flutter as Dean kneels at his side.

" _Cas._ " Dean pats his cheek gently, trying to rouse him. "Cas, are you all right?"

Cas turns his gaze on Dean, looking less blank but still confused. " _Be urmyo_ , he mutters.

"What? Say that again?"

More fluttering as his eyes lose focus. "Help me," he whispers, then his eyes fall closed. His pulse is strong, however, so Dean rolls him back onto his side, pulls the blanket over him and lets him be.

_Be urmyo._

_B. ur mio._

_Biurimo._

Dean sits beside him and scrawls these variants on a page in the journal Lisa keeps by her meditation stuff, trying to puzzle out some kind of meaning. He's still staring at it without success when Lisa returns.

"How is he?"

Stretching his back and rubbing at his neck, Dean says, "Seems to be sleeping, but he had some kind of seizure a while ago. Short and not very bad, and he woke up for a few seconds after."

"Did he know you?"

"I couldn't tell. He said a couple of things. _Help me_ , and something else that sounded like this." He holds her journal out to her. "Sorry, I had to write it down before I forgot it."

"No worries." She frowns over the words. "Any guesses?"

"Not the slightest idea."

Lisa ruffles Dean's hair, returning the book to him before she settles onto the mat next to him. "Well, it has to be a good sign that he's said _something_ , right? I bought a cot kind of thing so he doesn't have to lie on the floor. Unless -- you think that seizure means we should get him to a doctor?"

"I don't know what the hell to think, but to be honest, I'm not sure what a doctor would make of him. He's not exactly human. I mean, his body is, but I think the angel part overrides the default switches -- well, it did. I don't know about now."

She studies Cas for a long moment. "Well. Let's make the both of you more comfortable, at least." Rising, she goes upstairs and returns with the cot, then makes another trip for a camp chair. As they ease Castiel onto the cot he mutters again, this time something that sounds like _be one._

Dean leans closer to him. "What Cas? What did you say?"

But Cas is down for the count before he can respond. It takes a while longer for Lisa to argue Dean into the camp chair.

"I was just starting to do the laundry."

"I'll take care of it," she tells him. "Sit."

Sighing, he obeys her order, his shoulders rising in tight knots as she puts her hands on them. "God, you're knotted up." She pushes her thumbs into his flesh and he nearly hits the ceiling. "C'mon, relax into it. Breathe." Her hands move up into his hair, moving in gentle little patterns over his scalp, which he's never been able to resist. "Tell me about Cas. How'd you meet up with an angel?"

Dean doesn't respond, just lets her work until she's worked the tension from his head and neck and is starting in on his shoulders. "There's a lot I haven't told you, Lees."

"I know."

"It's as much not wanting to think about it as it is not wanting you to know."

She presses her thumb into a knot, making him wince. "As Dr. Asshole says --" Dean's pet name for Dr. Phil -- "'How's that workin' out for ya?'"

He lets that one lie, because she's heard him in his dreams, seen the nights he has to hit the bottle more than usual -- back to the way he was going at it when he first showed up on her doorstep. "So I was in Hell," he says so quietly even he barely hears himself.


	10. A Road That Runs Both Ways

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A snake-handling physicist and an angel find themselves in a bar....

"So I was in Hell," he says so quietly even he barely hears himself. "Not Hyperbole Hell, as in 'I'm having the week from Hell.' I'm talking the real place -- hot, a stench like nothing you've ever experienced, full of demons with sharp blades."

Despite her quick intake of breath, Lisa's hands never lose their rhythm. This is just one of the reasons she's a phenomenal woman, and he needs to remember this no matter how low he gets.

"That scar," she says. "Something there made that?"

He's always avoided answering when she's asked him before. "Cas did. To use his catchy phrase, he gripped me tight and raised me from perdition."

"He went into Hell for you," she says, her voice low and marveling.

"To hear him tell it, a small army did, but he's the one who made it to me." A sharp laugh escapes him. "He doesn't look like much now, but he's a badass mofo with a sword. I don't remember him from then -- it's about the only thing I don't remember -- "

Her hands keep moving, but right now it's less about beating knots into submission than providing comfort. "I guess it says something about the little I've seen of supernatural shit that the only part of that story I don't believe is that you'd end up in Hell."

"I made a deal with a demon," he says.

"Well, and that. That seems as far from you as ... I don't even have a comparison for that."

"Sam died. Bled out in my arms. I made a deal to get him back." The suddenness of the lump that rises in his throat surprises him. Sam's dead -- shit, worse, he's in Hell's supermax, with Michael and Lucifer probably taking turns making him their bitch. "So yeah," he forces past the tightness in his throat. "I was there. Cas busted me out. We've fought some battles together since."

Bending over him, she slips her arms around his shoulders, one hand settling over his heart. As she always does when the subject has turned to Sam, she offers silent comfort, her breath stirring the hairs on the nape of his neck. She knows just how long she can hold him until he gets twitchy, planting a quick kiss on his neck before she straightens and resumes kneading his shoulders. "So, what are angels like?"

He lets out a bitter laugh. "They're no Michael Landon, that's for sure. Though there's Cas, and then there are the others."

"You've met others?"

"More than a handful. They're dicks, all of them. Except Cas, and he can be a dick some of the time. But all the others I've met have a massive hate on for humans."

"Okay, that's not what I expected to hear."

Neither of them expects to hear what comes next: a sharp cry, cut off as Cas goes into another seizure.

Dean launches himself from the chair. "Cas!"

"Give him room," she says quickly. It's maybe a full thirty seconds before the seizure subsides, but it seems like an enternity. Once he stills, Lisa says, "Turn him on his left side."

After Cas is settled, Dean says, "Where'd you learn all that?"

"I had a yoga student who had epilepsy. She told me what to do in case she ever had a seizure. This is the first time I ever needed it."

"What now?"

"Just let him rest. He'll probably be out of it for a while."

The words are no sooner out of her mouth than Cas's eyes fly open, the clear blue as intense as the first time Dean saw him. There's awareness in them, that _I have a message from the Lord_ urgency that reminds him of the days before Cas had any doubts.

Cas pushes himself upright, sitting on the edge of the cot. Gazing directly at Dean, he intones, "Help me, Obi Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope."


	11. A Road That Runs Both Ways

"Help me, Obi Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope."

"What the fuck?" Dean yelps.

A lopsided grin appears on Cas's face, one Dean's never seen him wear before. "Just kidding. This here's Ash, with the Read Me file on Castiel 2.0. Thought I should fill you in before I unzip him. Whoa. That didn't sound quite right. Before I uncompress the file. So. What you have here is one fallen angel, with vessel, memories and personality intact, but degraced. Hopefully. This has never been done before, so I'm not sure exactly how it's gonna go. First thing you should know, Castiel's been implanted with a microchip. It's etched with all sorts of Enochian wards, so he's safe from demons and angels finding him. The chip's also where the Castielness lives, until I get it uncompressed. If this works the way I plan, I'll be running some diagnostics, so you might see some weirdness until I get any bugs worked out. He might be a little narcoleptic during the debugging; I think he'll sleep while the unzip and the fixes occur. Damn, Winchester, I think this is the longest speech I've made since I got here. Most times when I'm in other people's heaven, I'm doing a lot of listening. Speaking of which, Al helped me design this whole thing, and I won't lie, it's a thing of beauty. So anyhow. This tape will self-destruct in five seconds."

Dean meets Lisa's eyes then; he's sure his expression is just as thunderstruck as hers.

"Oh, wait. Jo and Ellen both send their love. I've seen 'em both -- they're each doing their own thing -- and they're good. See ya around, though I hope it's not for a long while."

With that, Cas slumps as if he's a puppet whose strings have been cut. Dean and Lisa hurriedly catch him and get him stretched out on the cot. As Dean rearranges the fleece blanket over Cas, the first non-angelic snores begin.


	12. A Road That Runs Both Ways

"Okay, that?" Lisa says. "That was seriously weird."

Falling back into the camp chair, Dean scrubs a hand through his hair. "No shit."

"Who is this Ash? Is he a hunter?"

"Nah, but he hung out at this hunter's roadhouse. He's a freakin' genius, MIT dropout--but something tells me he maybe was too smart to stick it out. From what I could tell, he could build, program or hack just about anything. Including angels, I guess."

Lisa settles on the mat beside Dean, hooking her arm through the chair's open side to rest on his thigh. Her gaze directed toward Cas, she says, "So he said Cas-- Cassiel?"

"Castiel." Dean drops his hand down to play idly with her hair.

"He's fallen?"

"Apparently." It doesn't seem possible, after Dean had seen him right after Sam slammed Lucifer back into his cage. It seemed like all the doubts he'd had about God had been settled, even without a personal audience, and that he was confident about setting things right in heaven. What the hell would send him on the express elevator back down to earth?

"Like Lucifer? Do I want him in the house with my kid?" Shaking her head, she says, "God, I can't believe I just said that. I don't even believe in that stuff."

"Oh, Lucifer's real. He's one of the dick-angels I've met. But no, not every angel that falls is out to overturn heaven. Some of 'em want to get away from the infighting, I knew one who just wanted to be human. With Cas ... I don't know. It doesn't seem like him." He flicks a smile at her. "I guess we won't know the answer until he's unzipped."

Patting his thigh, Lisa rises to her feet. "I'm gonna go check on Ben, make sure he's in bed. Then I'm going to to turn in too. Can I bring you something from upstairs?"

Dean reaches for her hand and kisses her palm. "I'm good. Thanks, Lisa. Means a lot, you helping me help Cas. It's the latest in a long line of things I owe you for."

Lacing her fingers through his, she says, "I owe you for my kid. You saving Ben outweighs everything you think you owe me."

"He's an awesome kid."

"Agreed," she says, planting a kiss on Dean's head. "See you in the -- well, whenever we manage to haul ourselves out of bed."

She heads for the stairs, and Dean allows himself a long, appreciative look in her direction. Once the door closes behind her, he settles in to wait for Cas 2.0.


	13. A Road That Runs Both Ways

After all the drama, Cas's awakening is fairly anticlimactic, at least from Dean's point of view. At some point during his vigil, Dean has fallen asleep in his chair. When he rouses, hand rising to his mouth to check for and wipe away any drool, he suddenly notices a pair of bright blue eyes gazing at him, the exact same way Cassie's cat used to stare at them from the edge of her bed each morning.

Straightening as much as he can in the unstructured chair, he runs his hand over his hair before he remembers the drool check. "Cas."

"Dean." This time he sounds exactly like Cas, despite the fact that he's curled on his side under a fleece throw, hair even crazier than when Dean first met him, face marked with the evidence of his blind run through the woods.

"How long have you been awake?"

"I don't know. How long was I not awake?"

Dean checks his watch and then the golden light slanting in through the basement window. "I guess maybe twelve hours. Do you remember how you got here? To earth, I mean."

"I fell. I had help."

With a little puff of laughter, Dean says, "In my world we call that getting pushed. Yeah, Ash left me a message. How do you feel?"

"I don't know."

Dean nods. "Let's break that question down. Does anything hurt?"

Cas's eyes lose their intense focus as he directs his attention to his own body. "My feet hurt. My right arm and knee."

"You were running through the woods without any clothes on, and you fell into a ditch. I'll take a look at those. Anything else?"

"I have discomfort here." For the first time he moves under his own power, uncurling his legs and uncovering one arm to settle his hand over his midsection. "It's been growing steadily worse. And there are strange muttering sounds issuing from there as well."

Dean laughs again. "You're hungry."

Shaking his head, Cas says, "I don't believe so. There was a ferocity to the hunger I felt before. This is not like that."

"That was the Famine whammy. Normal hunger's not that dire. I'm definitely hungry, so I'm sure you must be too. You hang out here, and I'll go find something for us."

The house is still when Dean lets himself into the kitchen. The coffee carafe is empty, waiting in the coffeemaker. Dean checks that Lisa filled it before she stumbled to bed, and as always she managed that even though she was wiped out. If there's no coffee, Lisa's still asleep, and the silence tells him Ben is too. Dean flips the on switch and the machine makes its first rattling cough.

He's not sure what you feed an angel who's eating his first meal (if you don't count whammy-induced wolfing of meat raw and cooked). He finds a pudding cup in the fridge and a packet of instant oatmeal in the cupboard, and makes a couple of peanut butter sandwiches while he's waiting for the water to boil and the coffeemaker to finish chugging.

Once again, this whole process of caretaking reminds him of Sammy, and a wave of grief crashes over him like a storm wave pounding a fragile boat, spinning him and upending him. A gasp tears through him and hot tears leak from his eyes, and suddenly he's clutching the edge of the sink, crying in a whole-body way that he hasn't given himself to since the old man started telling him to man up. By the time the kettle starts shrieking, all Dean can do is turn off the flame and sink to the floor, huddled against the cabinets. The waves keep coming, twenty years of stuffed-down sorrow (sixty, if you count Hell).

"Dean?"

Horror spears through him at being caught weeping by _anyone_ , much less Ben. Mopping his face on his shirt, Dean looks up. The kid's still in his Spider-Man pajamas and bare feet, wide eyes fastened on him.

Dean tries to pull himself together, but Ben's another strong reminder of Sammy's childhood, and fresh tears ride another racking sob.

"That guy," Ben whispers. "Did he die?"

Not trusting his voice, he shakes his head.

"What's wrong? Want me to get Mom?"

"No," Dean manages to say. "I'm okay," he says, which is such a thoroughly stupid thing to say it makes him half laugh, and then he's wiping snot on the hem of his shirt. _Just be yourself_ , Lisa's always said on those days when he's been lost in a fog of guilt and sorrow, convinced he should hide everything behind an iron wall. _He knows something's wrong, and it's less scary when it's not hidden._ But this much grief -- fuck, it scares _Dean_ , how's a little kid supposed to take it?

He tries it anyway. "I miss my brother, that's all. I miss Sam."

Ben puts a hand on Dean's shoulder. 'Yeah," he says quietly. "I know. It's okay."

Dean lets it all go then, Ben standing beside him, patting his shoulder and rubbing his back, the strong little man.


	14. A Road That Runs Both Ways

By the time Dean gets down the stairs, carefully balancing the largest tray he could find, he discovers Castiel is up and exploring the basement. The metal shelves contain mostly boxes, neatly labeled in Lisa's handwriting. Though she'd told Dean how much of Ben's childhood toys and books she'd had to give away or donate, to Dean's eyes it looks like a warehouse worth of stuff.

Castiel, on the other hand, looks smaller than he once did. It's like the trench coat was a layer of armor that's been stripped away. Now he's just a guy in sweatpants and bare feet, with a face full of scratches and bed hair. 

"Hey," Dean says. "Sorry that took so long. I, uh, couldn't find the bananas."

Approaching him, Castiel cocks his head the way he had the first time he appeared to Dean in his vessel. Dean suspects the tray's the only thing stopping him from getting up in his personal space like he had then. "You were distressed by this?"

 _Ah, Christ._ Cas isn't the most socially adept angel -- human -- on the planet, but he can read red eyes and a raw voice. And if Dean's got to teach him to be human, the least he can do is not give Cas crap information. He sighs. "Let me put this down." He sets the overburdened tray on the foot of the cot. "I just, uh, had a little flashback. I used to make breakfast for Sam when we were kids." 

"Ah. And these memories revived your grief."

"It didn't need reviving, Cas. It's always there. In this case the memories kicked open a door I thought I'd had blocked off. C'mon, sit down and have something to eat." Dean takes a mug of coffee and peanut butter sandwich for himself and settles back into the camp chair.

Cas regards the tray, crowded with the oatmeal, banana, pudding, peanut butter sandwich and a PBJ, plus Pop Tarts, cereal, a glass of milk, plain toast, a sleeve of saltines and a mug of tea. "This seems rather a lot," he comments at last.

"I wasn't sure what your system would handle, so I grabbed a few things that seemed likely. Just grab one and try it. If you don't like it or it seems too much, try something else."

Cas carefully settles himself next to the tray, eying everything but reaching for nothing, and Dean realizes he's overwhelmed by choice. 

"Try the oatmeal first. The blue bowl. It won't be good if it gets cold."

Following Dean's directive, Cas picks up the bowl and spoons some into his mouth. 

"Like it?" Dean asks. "You're frowning. Let's move on."

"No, I -- I'm thinking about it. I have little frame of reference." Spooning up another mouthful, he chews and thinks some more. "It's a great deal better than raw ground beef."

This spurs a genuine laugh from Dean. "Yeah, I'd guess. So if you want to stick with that, eat just until you're not hungry anymore, and we'll see how well you handle it."

Halfway through the bowl Cas sets it aside and takes up the tea mug. "These months without Sam --"

"They've been hard." Dean's voice is husky again.

"And I have been absent."

"Well, I guess when you appoint yourself sheriff of Tombstone, you don't get vacation time."

"This is truer than you know. But still, I feel I failed you badly. You once chose Hell over being parted from Sam, and now that he is gone --"

"He's not _gone_ , Cas, he's _in Hell_. Let's call it what it is."

Cas sips the tea, which Dean made strong, with spoonfuls of sugar. "Very well. Tell me. What do humans do when their friend grieves?"

Dean's startled at the question. "You're asking a Winchester that?" The only answer he gets is an unwavering blue gaze. "Lisa and I talked about this once, because I've never done normal. I guess there's a lot of different ways, same as there's a lot of different ways to grieve. If there's a funeral, people send flowers, they bring food, they talk about the dead guy if they knew him. Later on, it's just your closest friends who give a shit. They let you talk about it if you need to, or not talk about it. They take you out to distract you. Mostly they're just _there_." That doesn't sound right, more like a houseguest that won't go away. "Y'know, available. They help just by being a friend."

Cas nods. "I am available, Dean. You will need to tell me how to be your friend, but I wish to be present and helpful."

This is going to kill Dean, to be life coach to a renegade angel, spend all his time talking about the things he's always preferred to leave unspoken. It's going to kill him.

"You've got a deal," Dean says.

***

The coffee's gone lukewarm, but Dean washes the peanut butter sandwich down with it. He lifts a shoulder to wipe his mouth with the sleeve of his tee, then says, "What made you decide to fall?"

Cas's face goes carefully blank. "This is a thing I wish not to speak of at present."

Strange that he should be using that phrasing right after their conversation. Is he grieving this change? Already? Nothing for Dean to do but take his own advice. "Sure. So how did you meet up with Ash?"

"I was on the Axis Mundi. I was searching for --" He lets out a sigh. "Answers. Forgiveness. I'm not sure. He pulled me into his heaven."

Though he wants to press for more on those two words, tiny islands in the middle of Cas's response, Dean says, "The angels must hate his guts for all the screwing around he does with the heavenly order."

"The angels are unaware of him. He's managed to hide himself and his trans-celestial movements completely. I'm certain my brothers know of my disappearance by now, but he's made certain they won't know how it was accomplished or where I've landed."

"What did Ash want with you? Has he been working on this heaven-to-earth transport?" Dean isn't sure what he thinks of the notion -- cosmically bad idea, probably, to screw with the celestial order. But the idea of seeing his mom and dad, or Ellen and Jo....

"No, he invented it for me," Cas says. "I believe what he wanted was entertainment. He had heard the angels speak of me, and undoubtedly he'd also heard of the connection between you and me. He is a man of infinite curiosity."

"I can see that, yeah. And he's pretty damn entertaining himself."

Nodding, Cas says, "We drank an enormous quantity of moonshine."

Dean laughs. "That's Ash's heaven, all right."

"Dean?" Lisa calls down the stairs. "Is it okay if I come down?"

"Sure. Come down and have some breakfast. Especially if you've got hot coffee."

She makes her way down the stairs, freshly dressed and made up, and sure enough, three mugs are already in her hands.

"That's the woman I -- a woman after my own heart," Dean says, relieving her of two of the mugs and handing one to Cas that's more cream than coffee. "Here, try this. Lisa, this is Cas. Cas, Lisa."

Switching her own mug to her left hand, she holds out her right to Cas. "Welcome. I hope you're feeling better now."

"I am, thank you." With that, he shoves the coffee mug into her waiting hand and crumples bonelessly onto the mat at her feet.

Kneeling by his side, Dean checks his pulse, but it's pretty clear this is nothing more dire than sleep.

"Another code push?" Lisa asks.

"I guess."

"Has he been doing much of this?" She's already moving the tray off the cot, smoothing the linens and repositioning the pillow.

"Not since he woke up." He hoists Cas up and flops him onto the cot, and Lisa helps him rearrange his limbs and cover him with the fleece.

"Look," she says. "You know he's okay now, and he'll know where he is when he wakes up. You go upstairs and get some sleep, and I'll stay down here and watch him."

Dean hasn't even realized how bone-deep his exhaustion goes until she's said this. Much as he wants to insist on staying, he nods slowly. "Yeah, okay. Wake me up if he needs anything at all."


	15. A Road That Runs Both Ways

Castiel wakes to the sight of wooden joists above him and the muted murmur of voices farther above that. Due to his association with Dean, he can discern the difference between live conversation and television, and recognizes almost instantly that this is the latter. Rolling onto his undamaged shoulder, he discovers the chair where Dean kept watch is now occupied by Lisa. Though she holds an opened book in her lap, her gaze is directed at him.

"Lisa," he says. His voice sounds roughened, as if from long disuse.

"Hello, Castiel."

There is warmth and welcome in her voice and her smile, and Castiel cannot remember when he's been greeted in such a way. He has known _and they were sore afraid_ from humans, vicious battle cries from the enemies of his Father, and recently, the sudden quiet from his brethren that means he has been the subject of complaints or plots. Although he is certain of Dean Winchester's friendship, Castiel is generally greeted with an irritated _Where the hell have you been?_ or _Jesus! You just gave me a heart attack!_ or at best an expression of profound relief. This is new.

He offers what he hopes is an appropriate smile in return. The movement feels odd and he suspects he'll need a great deal of practice. "How long was I out?"

"Not that long. I sent Dean upstairs to get some sleep, but I can get him if you'd like."

"No." Castiel pushes himself up to sit on the edge of the small bed. "He seemed very weary before. Unless he's changed radically in these last months, he would not have been so overwhelmed by his feelings if he'd had proper sleep."

Lisa nods and Castiel finds himself fascinated by the swing of her hair, its glossy darkness. "My son told me. He didn't know what to do. Dean's been so quiet since he got here. I knew it would probably be bad when he finally let go, but Ben's too young to know that."

"How did Ben respond?"

"He said he just stayed there with him and talked to him."

"He behaved as a friend would. This is exactly the right thing to do." Lest she think he is arrogant enough to tell her how to be human, Castiel hastily adds, "Dean explained this to me."

Again he is struck by the warmth of her smile, and he tells himself to remember that this is something mothers long to hear.

"Ben's a good kid."

"Yes. And he is destined to become a good man. He will --" Belatedly it occurs to him that he is not meant to discuss the things he knows with those who are not given to know them before they come to pass. How can he have forgotten these strictures, so ingrained into his being when he was an angel? Castiel rubs at his forehead. "He will make you proud, I'm sure."

Lisa's acute gaze tells him she has not missed the significance of this slip, but she merely asks, "Does your head ache?"

"Yes."

She bends to retrieve a silver and red metal bottle resting on the floor. Deft fingers removing the bottle's stopper, she holds it out to him. "You need to hydrate."

The bottle is quite cold to the touch, condensation beading the metal surface. Dubious, he eyes it for a moment, then raises the bottle and upends it over his head.


	16. A Road That Runs Both Ways

"No!" Lisa exclaims. She has leapt up and relieved Castiel of the metal bottle before he even recovers from the shock of the ice cold water on his scalp. "I meant for you to _drink_ it."

Castiel glowers at her. "You might have said so."

Though he uses his most withering tone (the human equivalent of it, at any rate, since his former voice would have literally withered), Lisa bursts into laughter. "I'm sorry, but..." She trails off into more laughter, and Castiel's anger suddenly melts away and he finds himself laughing as well. It feels strange at first, this stuttering exhalation, but there's something freeing and exhilarating about it too. Lisa does not stop -- as she drops onto the cot next to him, gasping and shaking, it appears that she _can't_ stop.

Castiel lets his own laughter continue, following Lisa's lead. It is not a repetitive sound at all, he realizes. It changes in pitch and intensity as Lisa is swept along on the current of her mirth. He watches and imitates, although he knows mimicry is a poor imitation of the real thing. A loud snort issues from her, startling him, but he follows this example too.

"Oh god no," she says, her voice squeezed into a higher register by the lack of air. She tries to draw in a breath, but is hampered by her convulsive movements. "Don't learn that." Lisa wipes at her eyes, which are now expelling tears. "It sounds dorky."

"What is dorky?"

The only answer he receives is a shriek and an even deeper snort, and suddenly the humor of the moment reveals itself to him, and he finds himself truly carried away by laughter, his entire body given over to something too large to contain. It passes between Castiel and Lisa, each feeding off the other, with several false endings that dissolve into more hilarity.

When the spasms seem to have subsided for good, Castiel wipes at his tear-streaked face. He would look at Lisa, but he knows this would cause another eruption, so he gazes at his wet palm. "It's like flying," he says. Not exactly, because this has nothing of the grace and control of flight, but in its soaring exhilaration, it is identical.

He should have known. If his Father chose to deny humans the gift of flight, of course He would have given them another, mysterious and beautiful and overwhelming, if not quite as graceful to behold.

Handing him the metal bottle, Lisa says, "Drink."

Helpless, he gives himself over to laughter again, sputtering out a thank you. He lets Lisa believe the words are meant for her.


	17. A Road That Runs Both Ways

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A snake-handling physicist and an angel find themselves in a bar....

After Castiel and Lisa have composed themselves and Lisa has fetched him a towel for his hair, she asks, "How are you feeling? You didn't eat much, and it's been a while."

He pauses to assess his physical state. "I believe I am hungry." His midsection emits a soft yowl like the indignant protest of a cat.

"Sounds like we have a majority vote," Lisa says. Looking over the offerings Dean had brought, she says, "I think maybe the peanut butter and jelly sandwich might be a good bet. Peanut butter alone takes a little work, but the jelly helps it go down. Want to try it?"

At his nod, she hands him one of the small plates Dean had crowded onto the tray. Castiel sinks his teeth into the soft white bread and finds his teeth meeting in a center layer of some kind of paste mingled with a colder, sweeter gel.

"No good?" she asks after she watches him for a moment.

"No. I mean, yes, it's fine. It's just ..." He works his tongue against the side of his teeth to remove a clump of the paste. "It's just different. From what I expected. It's sweet. I thought sandwiches were savory."

Lisa reaches to retrieve the other sandwich from the tray. "That's usually the case, but not always. PB & J is pretty kid friendly."

"Does Ben like it?"

She smiles. "He does. And so does Dean."

Castiel eyes the sandwich dubiously and takes another bite. He's still uncertain.

"That doesn't mean you have to like it," Lisa adds. "Food shouldn't be a trial to endure. I mean, I'll make my kid try something new for at least a few bites, but you're a different case. I assume angels don't eat."

"No. We -- they -- are spirit. Even when an angel inhabits a vessel, there is no need for sustenance from external sources."

"That's hard to imagine." Lisa lifts her sandwich from the plate, regarding it for a moment. "Good food, even when it's simple, provides a lot of pleasure. Having someone else make a meal for you adds another level of enjoyment." She smiles. "He cut off the crusts for you, and cut it into triangles." She bites the point off one triangle, chewing thoughtfully.

"This signifies something? The removal of bread crust?"

"A lot of small kids don't like the crust. It's just sweet that Dean still does it that way. It's probably how Sam liked it." Her smile grows distant, a bit sad, and Castiel sees that smiles are another thing he must work on. "I'm sure that triggered some memories for him."

"Yes," Castiel says.

"He's a caretaker," Lisa says. "Which God knows is a good quality in a man, except he never gives the first thought to himself. Not even the last thought, some of the time. It's so ingrained in him, he doesn't even realize how unhealthy it is, or that sometimes bad things happen that aren't a direct result of his own failure. When he tells me about his father, I just want to--" She cuts off whatever she was going to say, tears off a fierce bite of her sandwich instead. After an angry period of chewing, she swallows. "It's a terrible thing to do to a kid. I try not to rely on Ben that way, but even so, he's quick to sense my moods and try to fix whatever's wrong, I worry sometimes."

"You raised him to have empathy," Castiel points out. "It is an important human quality."

"Are you saying it's better to have too much empathy than too little?"

"I do not know. It's not a quality I possess." Putting the remnants of his sandwich back on its plate, he sets it down, having concluded that the combination is an abomination.

He's not certain if the noise that issues from Lisa is a laugh or scoffing.

"Right," she says.

He levels a look at her that he presumes to be the one Dean refers to as the Pale Blue Stare. "Angels do not require empathy. It is not useful to us. We are messengers and warriors, that is all. If you wish sentimental creatures with halos and kittens, I believe there are figurines you can buy."

This time there's no question whether her response is laughter. "Okay, I guess this is why Dean says angels are dicks."

Castiel finds himself struggling to smother a smile. "No doubt."

Cocking her head, she studies his face. "So what made you decide to become human?"


	18. A Road That Runs Both Ways

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A snake-handling physicist and an angel find themselves in a bar....

Castiel finds he cannot endure the directness of Lisa's gaze, in spite -- or perhaps _because_ \-- of the fact that it is open and accepting. He shifts his eyes from hers, down to his own hands. His fingernails are ragged and drity, as if he had been left to claw his way out of his own grave, just as he had left Dean.

"I was appalled at what I had let myself become." He becomes aware of the rawness of his voice, as rough as the skin of his lips. "Power in the angelic realms is not an easy thing to maintain. It is like --" He recalls the phrase Jimmy Novak had used, and it prompts a bitter twist of his lips. "Like being chained to a comet. The things I found myself willing to do to maintain my position.... I told myself that I was different than those who came before me, that my motives were righteous. But I used my power as ruthlessly as those I sought to defeat."

"The means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek," Lisa murmurs.

Castiel turns back toward her. " _Yes._ "

"That wasn't me, that was Martin Luther King. And I guess that's especially true in angelic circles, since there _is_ no end."

"No," he says. "Just the world -- heavenly and earthly -- that we have shaped."

Lisa regards him for what seems like an eternity. While there is warmth and sympathy in her dark eyes, there is a probing quality to her gaze that makes him feel she is shining a light into the darkest places of his being. _Castiel, I conjure and command you, show your face._ Though his true form can no longer burn out this woman's eyes -- this vessel now _is_ his true form -- it can burn away the last shred of sympathy she holds for him. He waits for her to turn away in disgust.

Instead she smiles sadly. "I'm not sure if what I've got here is a shellshocked soldier or a dictator in exile."

"I am both," he says simply. "But in either case I have taken away no spoils of war. I have nothing, and I don't know where I will go from here."

She nods. "My suggestion is to start small. I think I should get you upstairs to take a long, hot bath. And after that you can have a proper hot meal."


	19. A Road That Runs Both Ways

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A snake-handling physicist and an angel find themselves in a bar....

As Castiel climbs the bare wooden stairs from the basement, he becomes aware once more of the aches in his body. They are forgotten in a moment as he crosses the threshold into a kitchen flooded with bright sunlight. Small plants in pots line the windowsill above the sink, and one larger one hangs from a bracket above. A multitude of cooking implements rest in a silver colored rack on the counter or on striped cotton cloths.

As they cross into the living room where Ben is sprawled in front of the television set, Lisa says, "Hey, kiddo, thanks for washing the dishes."

Attention firmly fixed on the flickering screen, he says, "I will, Mom. In a minute."

She musses her hand through his hair, saying, "Ben, buddy."

Reluctantly her son tears his gaze from the screen.

"I said good job doing the dishes. Thanks for doing it without being asked."

"Oh. You're welcome." At last he realizes Castiel is with her.

"Our guest is up and around," Lisa says. "Castiel, this is my son Ben. Ben, Castiel."

Castiel offers his hand. "Hello, Ben."

The boy scrambles to his feet and shakes Castiel's hand. "Hi, Mr. T. L."

Lisa's laugh trills like birdsong. "What?"

Confusion mingling with mild alarm on his face, Ben looks between Lisa and Castiel. "Is that wrong? Dean calls him Cas, and so --"

She musses his hair again. "You get major points for using Mr., but that would be like someone calling you Mr. Jamin. Castiel's one name."

"Oh. Sorry."

"There's no need to apologize. It was an understandable mistake."

Lisa says, "Castiel's going up for a bath, so you'd better Prince Charles it." As Ben nods and starts for the stairway leading up, she adds, "And _aim_."

Under the sound of Ben's white and orange shoes thumping on the stair treads, Castiel says, "I'm afraid I didn't understand any of that."

She laughs again, but Castiel is not certain whether he should join in or not, so remains silent. "It's a family code. I heard an interview once with Prince Charles, who said the most important thing he learned in the military was you should never pass up a chance to go to the bathroom, because you never knew when you'd get another opportunity. It saves all that back and forth, with the 'Go to the bathroom before we leave, Ben,' 'But I don't _have_ to!'"

"Ah," Castiel says, smiling. "Angels do not have such considerations when we prepare for battle. And the other thing you told him?"

"What? Oh, ' _aim_.' I swear to -- um, no lie, I keep telling Dean if you can shoot a chupacabra at fifty paces, why can't he hit the inside of the toilet bowl at one? And Ben's just the same. I suppose if you want to be a real boy, you should learn crappy aim."

"I don't wish to be a boy," Castiel says. "If I had desired to undergo the birth and a normal human lifespan, I could have done so without Ash's aid."

"Not, that's not -- You poor thing. How on earth do you manage to communicate with Dean? I have a hard enough time catching his references, and I watched a helluva lot of TV when I was a kid."

"It can be ..." he searches for a diplomatic mode of expression. "A challenge," he says, letting the word ride on a sigh.

Her response is a low chuckle. "I'm sure if we force feed you movies and TV shows nonstop for the next five years, we'll get you up to speed."

Once Ben has returned from the bathroom, Lisa shows him the way there, then demonstrates the workings of each of the fixtures there, then guides him through the use of soap, shampoo and toothpaste. After this, she turns back toward the bathtub.

"For starters, you should fill the tub to here, then get in. The water level will rise a lot when you do, so don't go crazy filling the tub until you know how much wiggle room you have."

"I will be wiggling?"

"Definitely not. It's just an expression. How much more the tub can hold. If the water gets cold and you still want to say, just let a little out --" Lisa flips a silvery switch to show him -- "then close it back and add more hot. Just take care not to burn yourself."

Castiel nods, studying Lisa as she glances around the room, brow furrowed. "You look troubled."

"Not exactly troubled," she says. "But how much actual knowledge of bodily functions do you have?"

"I know of them, but not intimately."

"Right. So you're probably not aware of your body's signals. Like how you tell you're hungry, or need to sleep or eliminate. I'm just thinking Dean might not be the best teacher. He gets weirdly bashful about some bodily things."

"Yes."

"It's all about paying attention to your body," she says. "I teach yoga, and it's all about listening to what your body is telling you."

He turns his gaze from the small bamboo plant on the sink counter, back to Lisa. "You propose to teach me this skill."

"Yeah, if you don't think it's too weird."

Castiel shrugs, approximating a movement he has seen Dean perform many times. "It's no weirder than I am, I suspect."


	20. A Road That Runs Both Ways, pt 21

Castiel dips a toe into the water, as Lisa had advised. _Your hand can tolerate more heat than you can bathe in_ It appears to be pleasantly hot but tolerable so he steps in and lowers himself into the water.

"What do I do once I am there?" he asked Lisa after she had informed him he could stay as long as he liked and showed him how to reheat the water. How long could washing take?

"You lie back and let the warmth relax your muscles, let your mind wander."

He frowned at that. "Where would it wander?"

"Just lie back and think of England," she said with an odd smile.

"Why England?"

Lisa laughed then. "No, that was kind of a joke. I'm not sure how to tell you to do it, it's kind of a natural human thing. You relax your hold on your thoughts as much like you do the tension in your muscles. Breathe in and out, like meditation. Let me know how it goes this time, and maybe I can help you figure it out along the way."

So he is lying back and thinking on this conversation. Lisa is kind and patient and she is indeed good at describing bodily processes without embarassment to herself or her student. But surely it is not her place to teach him every facet of human existence, merely because she had been willing to let Dean Winchester into her home and life with her son. In fact, Dean had not asked for this, either.

Castiel _had_ asked for this, but he hadn't known exactly what it was he'd brought on himself. Perhaps he should have fallen as Anna had, starting her human life afresh, with loving parents to guide her through each step. Castiel, by comparison, is full grown, aware of his limitations and impatient with the necessity of learning everything at once. Dean and Lisa are not his parents, and no doubt they will grow impatient with him as well.

He has made a dreadful mistake. Too proud to relinquish his knowledge and power, he placed himself in a world where he has no power at all. What he thought was knowledge turned out to be only bitter regret.

Drawing up his knees, Castiel folds himself over them and pours forth his grief and despair and self-loathing. Weeping, he discovers, is another human bodily function that does little to enhance dignity. He likes it even less than vomiting, which at least is over quickly. As his emotions build to a crescendo, he turns on the hot water tap to mask the sounds of his sorrow as much as to warm the cooling bath.

At last he falls silent except for ragged breaths, lying back against the porcelain to gaze sightlessly at the ceiling above. After a time he becomes aware of the sounds around him: the call and response of birdsong from the trees outside his window, punctuated by a scolding squirrel; the murmur of voices downstairs, now with Dean's added in. The boy's laughter mingled with Dean's.

He closes his eyes and gives himself over to the sounds, and the feeling of warm scented water against his skin. His thoughts begin to drift and at last he understands what Lisa meant by her instructions to let his mind wander.

Castiel drowses, waking with a heart-thudding start when an urgent pounding at the door breaks into his reverie.

"Cas! Give a guy a break, dude. I've gotta piss like a race horse."


	21. A Road That Runs Both Ways

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A snake-handling physicist and an angel find themselves in a bar....

Castiel drowses, waking with a heart-thudding start when an urgent pounding at the door breaks into his reverie.

"Cas! Give a guy a break, dude. I've gotta piss like a race horse."

Castiel sits up abruptly, alarmed at the violent rocking of the water as he moves. "Just a moment, I'll get out."

"Don't bother," Dean says. "Just pull the shower curtain closed."

As he complies with Dean's request, the plastic curtain bows inward as cold air sweeps into the room with Dean's entrance.

"Jesus, Cas, it smells like a French whorehouse in here."

Castiel frowns. "I was unaware that you had ever visited France."

Dean makes no response, but Castiel hears him stride toward the toilet and lift the lid. The quiet rustle of fabric and whisper of a zipper are followed by the vigorous sound of water striking water, and a loud sigh that is nearly a groan. Castiel is about to inquire whether Dean is quite all right when Dean utters a soft "oh yeah" as the stream continues.

Castiel has heard this tone from Dean, signifying pleasure in small comforts: a bed after a long day behind the wheel of his car; a piece of cherry pie. The reaction perplexes Castiel in this instance. After what seems to be a long interlude, the stream ceases and Castiel hears Dean refasten his clothes, then wash his hands.

"How's it going in there, you all pruney yet?"

"I ... do not think so."

Dean laughs. "Your fingers and toes, Cas. Are they all wrinkled?"

He looks at them. "Yes. Should I remove myself from the water?"

"Doesn't matter. It won't hurt anything."

"Oh." Castiel feels another wave of depression over the vastness of his ignorance. He knows intimately the meaning of infinity, and it seems that the things he doesn't know could fill it and overflow.

Dean's feet shuffle outside the curtain. "How are you doing?"

"I am pruney," he confirms glumly. He braces for another freezing draft when Dean opens the door, but to his surprise he hears the scuff of boot heels going in the opposite direction, then a creak as Dean settles on the toilet seat lid.

"What's wrong, Cas?"

"Nothing."

"You might not be an angel anymore, but you still suck at lying. Something's bothering you."

Sliding back down into the scented waters (Castiel has in fact been in an American whorehouse, and it smelled nothing like this; he _likes_ the overpowering scent, like fields of flowers that stretch far as the eye can see), he mutters, "This bathtub is too short. When I submerge to the shoulders, my knees are not covered."

"Yeah, that's one of the many imperfections of this world," Dean says breezily. "In other words, boo fucking hoo. I can sit here all day until you tell me. I'm not the one who's wrinkling to death."

"You said yourself --" he begins testily, but stops. He is behaving like a child, when it was being reduced to a childlike state is exactly what caused him such distress. He stares at the far wall of the tub enclosure for a long moment. At last he asks softly, "What am I to do?"

"What do you mean?"

"I am useless here. I came because I was sick and disgusted with what I had become, and all I thought of was escape. Now I am free of my old life, free of the fear of my brothers' revenge, but what am I? Not an angel. Less than a man. I have no work. I could not piss or shit without first being instructed, and I expect the same if I want to fuck."

"If you want lessons in belching and farting, I'm there for you," Dean offered. "But when it comes to fucking, I'll find you a book or something."

"How can you joke about this?" Castiel shouts.

There is startled silence from the other side of the curtain, then Dean says quietly. "Cas, this is nothing we can't get through. You just got here, it'll all come."

" _We_? This is not _our_ problem, Dean. It is mine. It's not fair to you -- or Lisa and Ben -- to impose myself on you while I learn every tiny step along the way."

Dean lets out a measured breath. "Maybe not. It probably wasn't fair for my old man to hand me a baby to raise when I was four years old. But I wouldn't change that for the world. It was the best thing I've done with my life."

"Better than saving the world?"

"Sam did that."

Castiel is well aware that there is little point in arguing with Dean's contention that he had nothing to do with stopping Lucifer. "Sam is different," he says. "He's your brother. Not to mention the fact that you were given no choice in the matter."

"Being brothers isn't always about blood," Dean counters.

Leaning forward, Castiel whips the shower curtain back.

Dean throws a hand up and ducks his head. "Jesus! Dude! No peep shows!"

Castiel doubts that Dean is truly flustered, suspecting it's himself that he most wishes to hide. Castiel rearranges the curtain so it shields the lower half of his body while allowing him to regard Dean. "You think of me as a brother?"

"You defied your whole family for me. You were killed twice. You said it yourself, Cas -- you did all that for me. What kind of shit friend would I be if I didn't feel some kind of bond with you after that?"

Castiel doesn't know what to say.

Fortunately, Dean adds, "Besides, you're not a six-month-old baby. We'll probably have you toilet trained in half the time."

It's this insult, a deflection of true emotion and an echo of the affectionate mockery Dean used to hurl at Sam, that makes him feel as though things might turn out after all. A smile twitches across his lips, but he says, "Dean, Lisa agreed to take you in, but I wasn't part of the package. To disrupt her life and her son's this way --"

"Again, dude, you're not six-months old. She's not committing to eighteen years."

Scowling, Castiel responds, "She hasn't committed to anything."

"She did, Cas. Lisa and I talked. She knows who you are and what you did for me. You're welcome to stay here a while, until you figure out where and how you want to live."

Castiel exhales. "I am glad." There are things he can learn from Lisa -- her kindness and warmth, her frank acceptance of the human body and its function -- as well as Dean, whose loyalty, determination and his sheer animal pleasure in the smallest physical comforts are qualities Castiel would like to emulate. Even Ben, he suspects, has lessons for him that will make him a better human.

"So am I," Dean says. "You don't have to decide your life path during one bath. Unclench a little. You're new to the whole free will thing, but it'll come."

"Yes, I suppose." After a moment, he says, "Some day I'll find a proper way to thank you, Dean." As soon as the words leave his mouth, Castiel realizes there is only one thing that Dean truly wants, and Castiel could not have done this for him even before he gave up his power.

Now that there is no curtain between them to provide cover for his emotions, Dean rises and peers into the mirror as if evaluating the length of his facial stubble is an urgent task. Dean's body blocks Castiel's view of his reflected face. "You don't have to do anything. You're here and not dead. That's enough." Turning away from the mirror, Dean still avoids Castiel's gaze. "Get back to your marinating. I'm going down to help Lisa with dinner. She's making baked mac and cheese, which I think is going to rock your world. Totally vegetarian, unless I grate my knuckle into the cheese."

The sudden draft of cold air that accompanies Dean's departure induces a violet shiver, and Castiel warms the bathwater again.

He slides beneath the water until his head is submerged entirely, listening for a moment to the muffled yet amplified sounds. Surfacing, he reaches for the shampoo bottle, resisting the obvious, cliched symbolism of rising from the waters.

But in truth, cliches become so because they are apt, and as Dean likes to intone in some reference Castiel does not understand, resistance is futile. Taking a different tack, Castiel ignores the symbol and concentrates on sensation. The froth of soap on his scalp and skin, the comfort of thick toweling beneath his fingers as he tugs it from the towel bar, the smell of his body, now cleansed from the sweat that reeked of illness and terror.

Cliche or not, he acknowledges this moment to himself as he steps from the waters into his new life.


End file.
